cold be hand and heart and bone
by lemoncelloismyname
Summary: The Dagor Dagorath has come, and Eönwë searches for Arien.


Disclaimer: the only thing I really own in this fic are the various spelling and grammar errors I am sure are littered throughout.

.&.

 _Cold be hand and heart and bone,_

 _Cold be travellers far from home._

 _They do not see what lies ahead,_

 _When the sun has failed and the moon is dead._

. &.

The sky above him was barren and lifeless, painfully empty except for the dying light of the moon, which was wavering pitifully across the darkness, lost without its greater celestial counterpart to guide it. Eärendil had been the first to go, struck down by Morgoth himself as he smashed his way through the Door of Night, and one by one the stars of Varda had followed, each painfully extinguished by the all-comsuming darkness.

The years of waiting were over, and the Dagor Dagorath had come.

And then, in an almost gloating display of his unimaginable power, Morgoth had sent putrid black clouds of formless evil to tear down the Sun from the sky. Eönwë could remember running frantically through the still lush fields of Valinor - fueled by a purely gutteral instinct commanding him to protect _her_ \- and calling out desperately for Thorondor, before falling to his knees, helpless to do anything but watch as darkness swallowed the Sun and Arien fell from the sky like a wingless bird.

He had begged Manwë to let him go, to search for her, ("Please," he had half-sobbed, half-snarled, and half-wimpered. "Please. I have to know.") and surprisingly the Lord of Breath had agreed, releasing him with naught but a urging of caution and a sad, tired look in his eyes. And so, Eönwë had searched and searched, frantically scowering the desolate rubble of Arda for the fallen Sun before his despair consumed him completely.

He wouldn't allow himself to consider the worst, much less fear it. Morgoth would keep her alive intentionally just to torment her further, Eönwë knew, and he would tear down the doors of Utumno itself if it came to that.

It did not however, and instead he had found her surrounded by the scattered remnants of the vessel that had once borne her across the sky, cast against the jagged mountainside like a discarded toy. The last fruit of Laurelin lay withered at her side, and it seemed as if she had curled around it almost protectively, using her tortured hröa as a pathetic shield for its once ethereal light. He had scrambled towards her, his blood cold, his pulse echoing in his head, desperately pleading to his father for her very existance. (Pleasepleasepleasenoplease.)

His prayers were answered; as he threw himself to the ground beside her she stirred, and Eönwë practically sobbed in relief.

And now, his Arien lay helplessly in his arms, bent and shattered and painfully broken. Once, it had been her fiery radiance that had seared the very flesh of Morgoth and kept him confined to the spiralling roots of Angband, and it seemed that now he had endeavoured to reap his own revenge, for parts of her mangled hröa were blackened and charred, the inferno having become like the very charcoal that it had once burned. She leaned against his chest weakly, seemingly exhausted, as if the very strings holding her up had snapped and left naught but a boneless carcass behind.

She could have been a corpse too, a limp, unmoving, dead thing, had it not been for the strangled gasps for air that sometimes tore from her throat, or the occasional, soft moan that resonated through her lips. (And when he had first beheld her, unburned skin pale and cold, limbs askew as if thrown from a great height, hair a brittle white colour as if the bright golden orange had been simply drained away, Eönwë had felt his heart leap into his mouth as the first trickles of true, animalistic fear had stabbed into him. But that had been before her eyes had fluttered open, and before she had released a low, strangled grasp of agony that made his fëa ache.)

And so, Eönwë clutched her tightly to his chest and scowled at the Sunless sky above him, an oath of vengeance burning deep within his heart.

-end-

AN: This fic was born from something I read on the Eönwë page of Tolkien Gateway, about how in some versions of the Legendarium it is Eönwë who kills Morgoth 'for his love for Arien', and although I wasn't able to find any more information, the idea stuck.


End file.
